Pages

Monday, 13 May 2013

JJ Abrams Is A Hack And Star Trek Into Darkness Demonstrates This

MAJOR SPOILER WARNINGS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS

Okay maybe I am being unfairly narrow
with just this. In the name of fairness, it's better to say that the
entire Star Trek Into Darkness creative team are pussies. But they're
pussies in a particular way, maybe not in strength or speed or
stamina, but they are creative pussies, with their artistic dicks cut
off and no intellectual balls in sight.

I'm going to talk about certain parts
of the film in particular. This is not a full review but just a
criticism of one aspect in particular about this film. That aspect is
regarding how Star Trek Into Darkness attempts to hold a mirror to or
at least be a homage, or even reference The Wrath of Khan. Whatever
it's trying to do with Wrath of Khan, it sure as hell isn't
demonstrating why it's better.

I'm not going to compare Khans here,
because overall I actually liked Benedict Cumberbatch's performance
and enjoyed parts of his character more than the Ricardo Montalban's
original Khan – but this is still not having seen the TOS episode
he first featured in and therefore not having the benefit of this
earlier character development. I think Cumberbatch's new Khan though
doesn't manage to redeem the film, but instead is a good distraction
from how the film is failing in numerous other areas to compete with
the original, or in my opinion be that good of a film in the first
place.

The plot involving Khan is abit of a
mess to begin with. Instead of making it a straight up battle of
intellect and strategy between Khan and Kirk, Into Darkness for some
reason feels the need to insert a second layer

into the film, which
could've been more interesting if it didn't feature a secondary
antagonist who makes little to no sense. Admiral Marcus is somehow,
without the knowledge of Star fleet or questions from anyone,
building a super starship by himself, using the increased
intelligence of Khan in order to fight a Klingon war. Oh he's also
trying to start this war himself personally even before he's got one
of the ship's off the production line. He makes no real sense and is
just thrown into the movie completely underdeveloped to give Khan a
cause (which also therefore makes no sense) and to create a
distraction to avoid Kirk and Khan actually interacting or
outsmarting each other.

The Wrath of Khan was basically a range
war between Khan and Kirk who never actually meet face to face during
the film and instead play out their strategies in isolation from one
another to see who can play the strongest hand. Thank god then that
this is the Star Trek reboot, where Abrams and his writing team
find all of this plotting and thinking is abit boring so instead have
their characters all have basic personality tropes and not be able to
sit still for one second without something exploding. Every element
of the film is trimmed down, whether it's a plot exposition spouting
scene or a short emotional break, or as I like to call it emotional
exposition, where basically the characters just say exactly what
they're thinking and how its affected and changed them. All of these
scenes are quickly followed by a convenient explosion because heaven
forbid we should linger on anything too long.

All of these problems with the movie;
its hyperactivity, insistence on showing explosions every two minutes
and dull trope characters wouldn't normally be so bad. They'd be
boring aspects of a film and I'd still dislike it, but when the film
is constantly referring to the superior original, it makes irritating
that they think they're really doing as good of a job. If you remake
something, regardless of what spin or changes to put on it, you are
still competing with it and trying to improve it. You've taken on the
challenge and merits that the other film put down and claiming you
can be better. The Wrath of Khan then is a well plotted, revenge
story between Kirk and a nemesis blast from the past who's come to
kill him and his entire crew. Within this is a good character drama,
with actual character development and themes. Into Darkness attempts
this slightly, but given that its plot is all over the place, its
antagonist is terrible, the characters are flat and it even attempts
to portray itself as slightly thoughtful (but fails to do it
horribly), then it just highlights how the film has failed to
compete.

At one point they even drag old Spock,
Leonard Nimoy, up on the monitor to ask him about the time he faced
Khan, as if the writers are looking for tips about how to make their
film better. Spock is hazy, doesn't really say anything and is just
an excuse for the film once again to point the finger and say, hey
look we're making a remake of Wrath of Khan. Yeah I know you are, and
it sucks.

I'm not even being nostalgic about
this, because as soon as I got home from being slightly irritated for
2 hours,(or was I watching Into Darkness, I can't remember), I went
to watch the Wrath of Khan, and it was much better. It's in hindsight
which I find Into Darkness more annoying by its constant reference
that it's remaking an old film and acting as if doing a good job at
it.

The only character development or
character at all we see in the film is minor and pointless. During
the first act, the film spends about twenty minutes with Kirk having
lost his captaincy before getting it back. Why does he get it back?
No real reason, just that the antagonist gives it him back for no
reason. The same antagonist who later is annoyed that an officer who
is known for not playing by the rules and so was demoted for it, has
turned out to have not played the rules and disturbed his plans.
Who'd have thought that this could get any more fucking stupid. So
Kirk gets his ship back for no reason and having learnt nothing about
responsibility. He does later (and I'm getting to this bullshit bit
in a minute) have some kind of character development, but it really
comes from the situation he's in and not because of the earlier
losing captaincy part of the plot. The first act of this film is
basically pointless.

I also found Spock far more grating in
this one, not simply being the intelligent and logical character he
was in the first film and the original series, his insistence on
logic is treated like a character trope here and gets irritating. He
uses the word logic all the time, sometimes for no real reason and it
makes me think whether or not the writing team actually know what
logic means, or whether they're just using it like a superpower,
similar to when scientist characters in films use the superpower of
science to get them out of situations. Spock is pedantic, Kirk is
stupid and an asshole and the antagonist makes no sense. The only
characters that come out of this film well are Scotty, who Simon Pegg
manages to pull off very well when compared to the film he's in and
Uhura, who doesn't really do anything here, but never really did
anything anyway, making her as good here as she was in the original.

This is the part where John Harrison announces he's Khan. He says it in a way that's supposed to be a reveal, but doesn't mean anything to Spock or Kirk. So I guess he's just shouting down the lens at us.

So now onto the bullshit bit and I must
say this really demonstrates why Abrams and his writing team are
truly shit. They basically took the end of Wrath of Khan where Spock
goes into the warp drive to save the ship and gets killed by the
radiation. The scene is surprising, it's hitting and sticks with you
after the film has gone. It's someone following through on their
beliefs that the many are more important than themselves and then
making the ultimate sacrifice. In all fairness to Into Darkness, this
aspect of it is pulled off as Kirk, being the captain, goes into the
warp drive knowing he'll die. Him and Spock then share a nice scene,
at the end of which Kirk dies. It's role reversal and cheap that they
sort of ripped off the original scene. It's not as good as it, but it
at least succeeds in what it needs to do.

Khan had recently shown he has
regenerative blood. Kirk is dead. You can put the two ideas together
pretty quickly and know what's coming next. But while the original
had the nuts to kill a main cast member, Into Darkness can't bring
itself to do it and I see this as a weak move by Abrams and team.
Kirk isn't even bought back to life in a sensical way. The guy is
dead, although looking strangely good after dying of radiation
sickness. At least Spock had some makeup that mad him look burnt
whereas Abrams is so obsessed with having everything shiny and smooth
that even radiation burns aren't good enough for Abrams camera and
Chris Pine's lovely face.

Kirk dies, and I mean actually dies,
like brain dead, dead. His eyes are open, he's not breathing, he's
been dead for several minutes and is confirmed dead by Bones before
Bones realises that the blood he got from Khan has bought a blob of
Jesus knows what the hell he put it into, back to life. Basically it
looks like a Furby that's been run over by a car and left in a rainy
ditch for several days and then starts pulsating, which makes Bones
know that the blood will bring Kirk back to life. Bones tells them to
put Kirk in a cryotube to stabilise his brain function before they
can inject him. Now I'm no doctor but I think that when you're dead,
brain function can't really be stabilised, because it's already
pretty stable at zero. He is dead, there is no brain function to
effect. It is gone. You could argue that Kirk isn't actually dead,
but instead that he's just alive, but just abit. However, as I've
already said in the scene before Kirk collapses, eyes open, silently
staring so deeply down the lens you can almost make out the
reflection of JJ Abrams smearing his shit all over a blank Star Wars
draft script in his eyes.

The only way to make his resurrection have any consequences would be for William Shatner to come back and play Kirk. Now that would be a crushing ending, almost as brave as the original. Like an inverse phoenix, the attractive and muscular Chris Pine dies and from the ashes rises the sweaty, fat, stuttering carcass of William Shatner. His body and mind destroyed by the heavy doses of radiation, Kirk spends the rest of the third film trying to rediscover himself and his identity in an existence where he's lost all sex appeal and charm. Star Trek III: Search For Dignity.

Whether you see this as a cheap get out
of jail free card pulled out of the film's ass, or a perfectly
acceptable set up to Kirk's revival, it is a cheap move, and the
creative equivalent of changing the goal posts to rob you of emotions
that you may have felt earlier, and then throw it back in your face
simply to show you how toying Abrams can be. They're referencing,
heralding and comparing themselves to the original movie, famed for
its death of a major character and demonstrate at the end that
they're just not good enough to compete. They're not brave enough to
pull a move like it and instead just put it out there half heartedly
before withdrawing that decision as quickly as they can when they see
the producers put the money back into their wallets. It makes no
sense why the death scene is in this movie since they do nothing with
it other than have Spock get abit angry. It also makes us unable to
ever fear again for any character because now they have immortality
juice in their hands and so no character ever need die again.

They may have a bigger budget and more
splosions, but all of this adds up to just a poor remake, that is
inconsistent, riddled with plot holes, pseudo exploratory and most of
all just not that interesting.

I'll never understand why JJ Abrams
continues to do so well and is so praised. To me, and I find Into
Darkness really demonstrates this, Abrams is nothing more than a bad
Spielberg hack, who has no interesting ideas and doesn't deserve the
money he gets to carry them out. He's a Michael Bay with a good
reputation and him and his writing crew are uninteresting and
spineless when it comes to not only failing making good entertainment
but failing to offer payoff to any of the setup they do in their
films.

Oh and I just found out why the plot
makes no sense, is full of plot holes and has a cheap ending. One of
the creative minds behind Lost, Damon Lindelof, was one of the
screenplay writers. May I say a kind Fuck him as well before I go.

Also, the first 10 mins where pretty good, chronicling the lives of some nobodies who die instantly. They are the deepest characters in the film, it isn't good writing if your extras produce more emotion in the audience then the main cast.

Thanks for the info on Lindlelof, so you know where I can find the interview. I just like watching him making a fool of himself. Most of Lindlelof's work, including and especially lost, seems to have a feeling of not knowing what he's doing.